The Overwatch League in Memes

The first stage of the inaugural Overwatch League season has recently come to a conclusion with a resounding reverse sweep of the London Spitfire against the New York Excelsior. What’s much more important though is how many OWL memes have come to life in the past weeks. Here are some of my favourites.

A Good Entrance Is Half the Win

The first stage might not have been very successful for our boys of the Florida Mayhem, but at least they have the best entrances of the entire Overwatch League. From running like Naruto to Gangnam Style, TviQ and the gang never cease to amaze the viewership and even got other teams to step up their entrance game. The Dallas Fuel carried Chipshajen on their hands through the arena to resurrect the fallen Taimou, the London Spitfire landed the biggest High Noon ever conceived by mankind.

Photograph taken by Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

Uber, Mr. X, and MonteCristo, being the mad lads they are, even went ahead and starred in a parody infomercial clip promoting only the finest of Mayhem’s moves.

It’s a z, It’s a Nine

The C9 – or z9 – is the father, the son and the holy spirit of all Overwatch memes. After Cloud9 forgot to stay on the point three times – causing them to drop Lijiang Tower and Volskaya Industries – in their match against Afreeca Freecs Blue during Apex Season 2, spamming C9 or z9 became Twitch chat’s national sport whenever a team leaves the objective prematurely or gets back-capped.

You could assume that the pros grew wise a year after the original incident – sadly, they didn’t. During the first stage of Overwatch League, plenty of objectives were yet again left, or if you played against Los Angeles Valiants back-capped. The latter was especially heartbreaking during the match of the Dallas Fuel versus the Los Angeles Valiants. The Texan squad barely won a fight against L.A.’s home team after investing both Support Ultimates, only to ignore the payload for a couple of seconds, giving SoOn a window of opportunity to secure Point 2 on Numbani nonetheless.

London Spitfire even printed out a sheet counting the days without them C9’ing and hung it up in their practice room. Ironically enough they pulled a C9 not long after.

The Houston Jakerat

Some players have already caused quite a stir during Stage 1 of Overwatch League. XQC did what XQC does best, and Profit unintentionally flipped the bird(ring) at the audience. Even though their actions would have been enough fodder for Reddit and Twitch to meme the living hell out them, there is one guy currently playing for the Houston Outlaws that has surpassed them in terms of being grade A meme material: Jake. Or J LUL K E, rather.

Throughout Stage 1, Jake almost exclusively played Junkrat. After xQc started to joke about Jake as well as his skill during one of his streams, Twitch chat decided to take Jake’s name and to spice it up with John Bain’s face. Ever since then, whenever you see Jake on screen, Jake being mentioned, someone playing Junkrat, someone talking about Junkrat, or Junkrat being shown in the OWL intro clip, you can be sure there will be plenty of “J LUL K E”s in chat.

If there is no “J LUL K E” spam the second a player picks Junkrat, you can be sure one of the vowels in their own name will be replaced with LUL. The same applies to every player who delivers a zesty NA Ultimate.

His Knees Weak, Earthshatters Fatty

Eminem? Pretty outdated. Overwatch League bestowed us upon a new rap god coming straight from Down Under, and his name is Mitch “Uber” Leslie. While Uber’s trademark energetic, high-octane casting style is already phenomenal during regular team fights, he starts to transcend to a higher plane during clutch Overtime battles, delivering what feels like a whopping 180 words per minute.

There are plenty of “Mitch Leslie Rap God” videos on Youtube combining Uber’s casting with some tasty beats. Go check them out right now.

Doomfist, Ana, Bastion

Not even Overwatch League is safe from some intense dabs. It’s fairly normal to see a handful people in the crowd of eSports events dabbing . Even I did it once, but let’s not focus on that. But in OWL, even the pros can’t resist the temptation to take a quick sniff at their elbow. Mickie, xQc, and Chipshajen of the Dallas Fuel as well as Nomy, Dhak, and Babybay of the San Francisco Shock are only a couple of culprits.

The best dab so far, in my humble opinion, was delivered by none other than New York Excelsior’s very own “Big Boss” Pine during their match against the Houston Outlaws. His hands and arms were perfectly aligned, the dab itself pulled off quickly, and at an almost perfect angle of 45 degrees. It was a Da Vinci of a dab.

For a Handful of Memes

I could virtually go on forever. Overwatch has always been an entertaining meme fiesta, but Overwatch League took the game to the next level – professionally and meme-wise. Just take a look at one of the fantastic bingo sheets that have been posted on Reddit.